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Baked Cod with Roasted Sweet & Sour Vegetables
Yesterday, it snowed. Today the winter sky is clear and bright. The snow shadows are blue- almost purple. I was sorry to see the last of our Beef and Potatoes au Chocolat go. A chilly day like today is the perfect day for a slow cooked soup or stew. But alas. There's not a cup of soup in the house. Or any leftovers, for that matter. Last night we tossed together a simple dinner for two- cod fillets baked in olive oil and garlic, and topped with tangy roasted vegetables. Mermaid comfort food.
It was gone faster than you could say Daryl Hannah.
Baked Cod with Roasted Sweet & Sour Vegetables
The roasting sauce was an easy combo of good tasting olive oil, balsamic vinegar (for the sour) and apricot preserves (for the sweetness). Adjust the seasoning to your taste buds. Make it as savory or spicy as you like.*
First, put on a pot of long grain white or basmati rice, and roast the vegetables.
Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Combine in a roasting pan:
Half a head of purple cabbage, sliced thinly
1 sweet or red onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups broccoli florets
1 green sweet pepper, sliced into strips
2 carrots, sliced into matchsticks
For the sauce, combine:
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup apricot preserves
2 cloves garlic, minced
Sea salt and ground pepper, to taste
1/2 teaspoon mild or hot curry, or hot pepper flakes, to taste (use paprika if you prefer mild)
*Add a dab of honey mustard, if you like mustard
Pour the sauce on the vegetables and stir to coat. Roast the vegetables on the lower of two racks in a hot oven until tender-crisp and almost but not quite done; say, maybe 40 to 45 minutes.
Then add your fish dish to the upper rack, and bake.
Ideally, the veggies and fish will be ready at the same time. The fish will only take 7 to 10 minutes, depending on thickness. Keep an eye on it, and don't over-bake it; it should flake and appear opaque when done.
For the fish:
2 single cod fillets (or one large fillet, cut in half)
Extra virgin olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
A squeeze of citrus (lemon, lime or orange)
Sea salt and ground pepper, to taste
Place the fish in an oven-proof dish and drizzle with a little olive oil. Scatter garlic on top. Squeeze a little citrus all over the fillets and season to taste with sea salt and pepper.
Bake for 7 to 10 minutes until done.
Serve the fillets on a bed of hot cooked rice seasoned with olive oil, sea salt and ground pepper. Top with the roasted veggies and spoon any extra roasting sauce from the pan all over the top.
Serves 2.


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Anyone who has signed up recently for cell phone service has faced a stern test in trying to figure out the cost of carry-forward minutes versus free calls within a network and how it compares with the cost of such services as push-to-talk, roaming, and messaging. Many, too, have fallen for a rebate offer only to discover that the form they must fill out rivals a home mortgage application in its detail. And then there are automated telephone systems, in which harried consumers navigate a mazelike menu in search of a real-life human being. So little confidence do consumers have in these electronic surrogates that a few weeks after the Web site www.gethuman.com showed how to reach a live person quickly at ten major consumer sites, instructions for more than 400 additional companies had poured in.
An excess of features, baited rebates, and a paucity of the personal touch are all evidence of indifference to what should be a company's first concern: the quality of customers' experiences. In the first example, the carrier offered a jumble of phone services in part to discourage comparison shopping and thus price wars. In the second, the company offered a hard-to-obtain rebate to stimulate a purchase. And in the third, the goal was to slash staffing costs, despite soothing claims of 24-hour self-service availability. Unfortunately, such cunning makes for customer experiences that engender regret and then the determination to do business elsewhere.
Customer experience encompasses every aspect of a company's offering—the quality of customer care, of course, but also advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability. Yet few of the people responsible for those things have given sustained thought to how their separate decisions shape customer experience. To the extent they do think about it, they all have different ideas of what customer experience means, and no one more senior oversees everyone's efforts.
Within product businesses, for example, product development defers to marketing when it comes to customer experience issues, and both usually focus on features and specifications. Operations concerns itself mainly with quality, timeliness, and cost. And customer service personnel tend to concentrate on the unfolding transaction but not its connection to those preceding or following it. Even then, much service is rote: Otherwise, why would service reps ask, as they so often do, "Is there anything else I can help you with?" when they haven't even dealt with the original reason for the call or visit?
Some companies don't understand why they should worry about customer experience. Others collect and quantify data on it but don't circulate the findings. Still others do the measuring and distributing but fail to make anyone responsible for putting the information to use. The extent of the problem has been documented in Bain & Company's recent survey of the customers of 362 companies. Only 8% of them described their experience as "superior," yet 80% of the companies surveyed believe that the experience they have been providing is indeed superior. With such a disparity, prospects for improvement are small. But the need is urgent: Consumers have a greater number of choices today than ever before, more complex choices, and more channels through which to pursue them. In such an environment, simple, integrated solutions to problems—not fragmented, burdensome ones—will win the allegiance of the time-pressed consumer. (For more on making the buying process simpler, see James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones, "Lean Consumption," HBR March 2005.) Moreover, in markets that are increasingly global, it is dangerous to assume that a given offering, communication, or other contact will affect faraway consumers the same way it does those at home.
Although few companies have zeroed in on customer experience, many have been trying to measure customer satisfaction and have plenty of data as a result. The problem is that measuring customer satisfaction does not tell anyone how to achieve it. Customer satisfaction is essentially the culmination of a series of customer experiences or, one could say, the net result of the good ones minus the bad ones. It occurs when the gap between customers' expectations and their subsequent experiences has been closed. To understand how to achieve satisfaction, a company must deconstruct it into its component experiences. Because a great many customer experiences aren't the direct consequence of the brand's messages or the company's actual offerings, a company's reexamination of its initiatives and choices will not suffice. The customers themselves—that is, the full range and unvarnished reality of their prior experiences, and then the expectations, warm or harsh, those have conjured up—must be monitored and probed.
Such attention to customers requires a closed-loop process in which every function worries about delivering a good experience, and senior management ensures that the offering keeps all those parochial conceptions in balance and thus linked to the bottom line. This article will describe how to create such a process, composed of three kinds of customer monitoring: past patterns, present patterns, and potential patterns. (These patterns can also be referred to by the frequency with which they are measured: persistent, periodic, and pulsed.) By understanding the different purposes and different owners of these three techniques—and how they work together (not contentiously)—a company can turn pipe dreams of customer focus into a real business system.
What Customer Experience Is
Customer experience is the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company. Direct contact generally occurs in the course of purchase, use, and service and is usually initiated by the customer. Indirect contact most often involves unplanned encounters with representations of a company's products, services, or brands and takes the form of word-of-mouth recommendations or criticisms, advertising, news reports, reviews, and so forth. Such an encounter could occur when Google's whimsical holiday logos pop up on the site's home page at the inception of a search, or it could be the distinctive "potato, potato" sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle's exhaust system. It might just be an e-mail from one customer to another.
The secret to a good experience isn't the multiplicity of features on offer. Microsoft Windows, which is rich in features, may provide what a corporate IT director considers a positive experience, but many home users prefer Apple's Macintosh operating system, which offers fewer features and configuration options. A customer's experience with an Apple device begins well before the purchaser turns it on—in the case of the iPod, perhaps with the dancing silhouettes in the TV advertisements. The origami-like (and recyclable) packaging enfolds the iPod as though it were a Fabergé egg made for a czar. A small sticker, "Designed in California, Made in China," communicates the message that Apple is firmly in charge but also interested in keeping costs down. Even Windows users appreciate the device's intuitive, Mac-like feel and find that downloading tracks from iTunes is easier than buying a CD on Amazon. Every Apple product is designed with the overarching purpose of making the time one spends with Apple an enjoyable experience.
A successful brand shapes customers' experiences by embedding the fundamental value proposition in offerings' every feature. For BMW, "the Ultimate Driving Machine" is much more than a slogan; it informs the company's manufacturing and design choices. In 2000, Mercedes-Benz introduced a system that automatically controls the distance between a Mercedes and the car in front. BMW would not consider developing such a feature unless it amplified rather than diminished the driving experience.
Service quality and scope matter, too, but mostly when the core offering is itself a service. For example, the tracking and shipping support FedEx provides on the Internet and by phone is as important to customers as its fundamental value proposition—on-time delivery.
In their concern with logistics—how something is provided, not just what is provided—business-to-business companies take after consumer-service companies. For both, the goal is to provide a positive experience to the end user. The business partner or supplier of a B2B company helps the latter do that first by understanding where in its direct customers' value chain the B2B can make a meaningful contribution, and then when and how. Those are different undertakings from capturing and parsing a given human being's internal, ineffable experience. A business's "experience," one might say, is its manner of functioning, and a B2B company helps its business customers serve their customers by solving their business problems, just as an effective business-to-consumer company fulfills the personal needs of its customers. In a B2B context, a good experience is not a thrilling one but one that is trouble-free and hence reassuring to those in charge.
Thus, a supplier satisfies the purchasing department of its business customer by providing a balance of costs and benefits; it satisfies operations by offering products or services that are easy to use; and it satisfies a customer's executives by expanding capacity at the same rate as the customer and in general evolving alongside it. Accordingly, sales and marketing do not necessarily monopolize points of contact with customers: Operations people at the first company deal directly with their counterparts at the second, and so forth. The functional nature of the relationship—indeed, the fact that it is a true relationship—creates a pervasive awareness of experience issues and priorities.
Corporate leaders who would never tolerate a large gap between forecasted and actual revenues prefer to look the other way when company and customer assessments diverge.
Whether it is a business or a consumer being studied, data about its experiences are collected at "touch points": instances of direct contact either with the product or service itself or with representations of it by the company or some third party. We use the term "customer corridor" to portray the series of touch points that a customer experiences. What constitutes a meaningful touch point changes over the course of a customer's life. For a young family with limited time and resources, a brief encounter with an insurance broker or financial planner may be adequate. The same sort of experience wouldn't satisfy a senior with lots of time and a substantial asset base.
Not all touch points are of equivalent value. Service interactions matter more when the core offering is a service. Touch points that advance the customer to a subsequent and more valuable interaction, such as Amazon's straightforward 1-Click ordering, matter even more. Companies need to map the corridor of touch points and watch for snarls. At each touch point, the gap between customer expectations and experience spells the difference between customer delight and something less.
People's expectations are set in part by their previous experiences with a company's offerings. Customers instinctively compare each new experience, positive or otherwise, with their previous ones and judge it accordingly. Expectations can also be shaped by market conditions, the competition, and the customer's personal situation. Even when it is the company's own brand that establishes expectations, the customer can be set up for disappointment. For example, Dell transformed buying computers over the Internet from a risky to a reliable experience. When it extended that set of procedures to the selection and purchase of expensive plasma HDTV sets, however, it disappointed. Dell did an effective job of creating positive customer expectations, but they turned out to be better fulfilled by the in-person sales force at Best Buy.
Ideally, good design makes both the most routine and the weightiest customer experiences—checking a price, getting a question answered, or placing a multimillion-dollar order—pleasant and efficient. However, even when dissatisfaction or wariness arises, artful control of consumer experience can overcome it.
In its development of a new AIDS drug, Gilead Sciences provides a good example of how a failure to understand the experience and expectation component of a consumer segment's dissatisfaction can turn into a failure to reach that segment. Upon releasing the new medication, which had demonstrated advantages over existing ones, Gilead noticed that while sales to patients new to therapy were robust, sales to patients already undergoing treatment were growing far more slowly than expected. For HIV/AIDS patients, switching medications, Gilead discovered, is very different from choosing an alternative cold remedy. Switching requires ending a trusted relationship in the hope of reaching an uncertain improvement level. The company also learned that HIV-positive patients are far more interested in the potential adverse effects of a new drug than in its supposedly superior efficacy. With this new understanding, Gilead decided to emphasize in its marketing the new drug's lower incidence of serious side effects. It also segmented the patients' physicians by their willingness to prescribe a different medication from the ones they knew. Once Gilead made it easier for patients to switch drugs, the market share of the company's main competitor dropped 33%.
Why the Neglect?
CEOs may not actively deny the significance of customer experience or, for that matter, the tools used to collect, quantify, and analyze it, but many don't adequately appreciate what those tools can reveal. Three forces in the main conspire to preserve this gap.
Too much money already lavished on CRM.
Having spent millions of dollars on customer relationship management software, many CEOs consider their problem to be not a lack of customer information but a superfluity of it. Before investing more time and money, executives justifiably want to know how customer experience data are different and what their value is.
To put it starkly, the difference is that CRM captures what a company knows about a particular customer—his or her history of service requests, product returns, and inquiries, among other things—whereas customer experience data capture customers' subjective thoughts about a particular company. CRM tracks customer actions after the fact; CEM (customer experience management) captures the immediate response of the customer to its encounters with the company. Employees accustomed to reading the marketing department's dry analyses of CRM point-of-sale data easily grasp the distinction upon hearing a frustrated customer's very words. (For a detailed account of the difference between the two approaches, see the exhibit "CEM Versus CRM.")
CEM Versus CRM
Customer experience management (CEM) and customer relationship management (CRM) differ in their subject matter, timing, monitoring, audience, and purpose.
CEM Data for Captures and distributes what a customer thinks about a company |
CRM Captures and distributes what a company knows about a customer |
CEM At points of customer interaction: "touch points" |
CRM After there is a record of a customer interaction |
CEM Surveys, targeted studies, observational studies, "voice of customer" research |
CRM Point-of-sales data, market research, Web site click-through, automated tracking of sales |
CEM Business or functional leaders, in order to create fulfillable expectations and better experiences with products and services |
CRM Customer-facing groups such as sales, marketing, field service, and customer service, in order to drive more efficient and effective execution |
CEM Leading: Locates places to add offerings in the gaps between expectations and experience |
CRM Lagging: Drives cross selling by bundling products in demand with ones that aren't |
Moreover, many CEOs don't sufficiently appreciate the distinction between customer satisfaction, which they believe they have heavily documented, and customer experience, which always demands further investigation.
Lack of attunement to customers' needs.
Leaders who rose through customer-facing functions, such as Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, are more likely to act with reference to customer experience than those who have not. When competing new technologies are difficult to choose among, Cisco defers its choice until key customers have registered their reactions. Because the company knows there will be a market for the choice it finally makes, it can afford to commit itself later than its competitors.
In contrast, executives who rose through finance, engineering, or manufacturing often regard managing customer experience as the responsibility of sales, marketing, or customer service.
Fear of what the data may reveal.
It's easy to say one's business is customer-driven when there are no data to prove otherwise. Once data start flowing, the bogeymen come out of the closet. Can we afford to do what customers are asking for? How do we choose between conflicting preferences? Can we accept what customers say they are experiencing without first telling them what they should be experiencing? Corporate leaders who would never tolerate a large gap between forecasted and actual revenues prefer to look the other way when company and customer assessments diverge, as they do in the Bain survey.
Executives also hesitate to act on findings because experience data are more ambiguous than customers' actions—the orders they place, for instance. However, statistical analysis has developed to the point where it can dependably quantify both the relative importance of each touch point and the experience it provided. It can also isolate key transactions, accounts, regions, customer segments, and so forth, and then parse the resulting data. About ten years ago, companies started collecting experience information electronically. Now they can instantly combine it with data collected from CRM systems and other customer databases, conduct analyses of both individual and aggregate responses in real time, and then automatically route and track issues needing resolution.
Squishier are observation studies and verbatim comments, which for that reason don't get the attention they deserve. Approached, however, with the requisite empathy and insight, they can be in their own way more revealing than concrete findings. For one thing, even consumers sharply aware of a product's or brand's deficiencies can't quite picture what might replace it. That's why Henry Ford said that if he asked his customers before building his first car how he could better meet their transportation needs, they would have said simply, "Give us faster horses." Properly understood, the currents beneath the surface that direct the flow of customer experience data will indicate the shape of the next major transformation.
All Hands on Board
Many organizations place responsibility for collecting and assessing customer experience data within a single, IT-supported customer-facing group. Doing so accomplishes at least three things: It saves money; it protects customers from redundant and annoying solicitations; and it permits direct comparison of customers on the basis of their location, choice of product, or some other criterion.
But it is a mistake to assign to customer-facing groups overall accountability for the design, delivery, and creation of a superior customer experience, thereby excusing those more distant from the customer from understanding it.
In contrast to this common pattern, Palm drew on customer experience to make the Treo one of its most successful products ever. A combination of cell phone and Palm Pilot, the original Treo used the same built-in rechargeable battery as the Palm organizers. When used as a cell phone, the device consumed far more power than it did when used as an organizer. So customers who were heavy users of the cell phone feature found that their Treos were often losing power—and often at an inconvenient distance from their rechargers. Complaints about this problem began showing up in Palm's customer-service transaction surveys. But the customer service department could offer the Treo's unhappy owners only minor power-saving tips.
Dissatisfied with the status quo, customer service vice president Dan Gilbert, showing unusual initiative, distributed the experience data his department had collected to product development, which went to work on the problem. The next-generation Treo came with a battery that users replace. In 2005, sales were 71% higher than the previous year.
Typically, however, a vigorous reaction to intelligence gathered on customer experience requires general management to orchestrate a response to customer problems. Intuit learned that when it tried to address the trouble customers were having installing a new release of TurboTax. The solution turned out to be cross-functional, but no one who had been asked to deal with it was senior enough to "own" the entire installation process.
Obtaining the Right Information
There are three patterns of customer experience information, each with its own pace and level of data collection. (For a detailed breakdown of the three patterns, see the exhibit "Tracking Customer Experience: Persistent, Periodic, Pulsed.")
Tracking Customer Experience: Persistent, Periodic, Pulsed
Companies can monitor various patterns of interaction with customers to gain a better understanding of the customer experience they are providing. Depending on the precise information a company is seeking, it may choose to analyze past patterns, present patterns, potential patterns, or a combination. Each pattern requires a distinct method of generating and analyzing data and will yield different types of insights.
Past patterns |
Present patterns |
Potential patterns |
Purpose |
Past patterns Capture a recent experience.
Present patterns Track current relationships and experience issues with an eye toward identifying future opportunities.
Potential patterns Target inquiries to unveil and test future opportunities. |
Examples |
Past patterns
Present patterns
Potential patterns
Owner |
Past patterns Central group or functions |
Present patterns Central group, business units, or functions |
Potential patterns General management or functions |
Data Collection Frequency & Scope |
Past patterns Persistent:
Present patterns Periodic:
Potential patterns Pulsed:
Collection & Analysis Methodology |
Past patterns
Present patterns
Potential patterns
Discussion & Action Forums |
Past patterns
Present patterns
Potential patterns
When companies monitor transactions occurring in large numbers and completed by individual customers, they are looking at past patterns. Enterprise Rent-A-Car is supposed to ask every driver returning one of its vehicles, "Would you rent from Enterprise again?" Any new service a France Telecom customer receives is followed by a brief questionnaire on the quality of his or her experience. As these two examples demonstrate, each attempt to determine the quality of the experience directly follows the experience itself. So companies receive by this method an uninterrupted, or "persistent," flow of information, which they then analyze and communicate internally. Although surveys are the tool used most often for gathering data on past patterns, customers are sometimes approached through online forums and blogs. Companies are mostly guided by assertions that win customers' strong agreement, but sometimes customers' failure to react strongly to some feature or service can be just as telling. For this reason, the employees evaluating results must be attuned to areas of customer experience that a survey or other tool does not directly address.
Analyses of present patterns are not simply evaluations of the meaning and success of a recent encounter. They envision a continuing relationship with the customer. Consequently, questions may extend to the customer's awareness of alternative suppliers, new features the customer might desire, and what it sees as challenges to its competitiveness. Given the broad scope of the inquiry, this type of monitoring shouldn't be triggered solely by a customer-initiated transaction. Instead, information on a company's key products and services should be gathered at scheduled intervals, or "periodically." Hewlett-Packard and the consulting firm BearingPoint, for example, approach every key customer annually. By initiating contact with different customers at different times throughout the year, BearingPoint has created an almost persistent data flow that does not depend on the completion of a given transaction, while permitting comparisons among customers on a range of issues. BearingPoint learned in this fashion that the best practices it had established in one vertical-market group had not migrated to other groups.
Present patterns are collected through surveys or face-to-face interviews, studies tailored to the subject, or some combination thereof. It helps to prepare customers for the inquiry by telling them the purpose of the survey, how they will hear about the findings, and what role they might play in addressing them. Accordingly, Hewlett-Packard rewards its account managers on survey-participation rates as well as results.
Potential patterns are uncovered by probing for opportunities, which often emerge from interpretation of customer data as well as observation of customer behavior. Like the study Gilead conducted, such probes are outgrowths of strategies usually involving the targeting of particular customer segments and are therefore unscheduled, or "pulsed." The findings are often used to inform the product development process.
Most companies apply a single summary metric to data on past and present patterns. The customer experience metric Net Promoter, for example, registers customers' experiences in aggregate—that is, their positive ones minus their negative ones. Intuit's founder, Scott Cook, uses Net Promoter scores for goal setting and engaging the organization's attention, though he recognizes that a rising or falling score doesn't begin to reveal what is driving the trend.
As relationships with customers deepen, companies tend to collect data with greater frequency. The patterns that emerge suggest further areas of inquiry. For example, present-relationship studies may indicate that on-site service experience is wanting. After improvements are made, it's common to use a transaction survey following each service call to assess progress. A subsequent, more comprehensive survey may show good experience with service response time but low overall ratings, triggering a special study to identify customers' priorities among a range of service experience factors.
Low cost and ease of modification make surveys the overwhelming favorite for measuring past and present patterns. E-mail–based surveys are superior to paper-based ones because they can be more easily shared; they allow rapid distribution; they give the surveyor the flexibility to extend or abbreviate the questioning according to the wishes of the respondent or the substance of the response; they minimize delays in analyzing the results; and they lead to quick action, such as a referral to a general manager should scores fall below a predetermined level. E-mail surveys can also be more easily tailored. For example, the surveys Marvin Windows and Doors sends to its distributors are different from those sent to architects who buy its products.
A well-designed survey is not simply one that elicits the desired information. It must itself avoid becoming an unfortunate aspect of the customer experience. Hence, it shouldn't be onerous for the taker or deny him the chance to communicate the special nature of his experience. One way of keeping surveys mercifully brief is to avoid asking about matters like recent purchases that the company already has a record of. Nor should they be triggered by the transactions of regular customers such as purchasing agents. Such customers are, after all, among those a business can least afford to annoy. By the same token, corporate sanctions imposed on dealers who receive low scores shouldn't be so harsh that retailers try to discourage customers from responding by offering to fix any problem on the spot. The individual customer may be placated, but widespread resort to this practice keeps general management from obtaining a broad picture of systemic problems.
A well-designed survey is not simply one that elicits the desired information. It must itself avoid becoming an unfortunate aspect of the customer experience.
Surveys do have their limitations, and focus groups, user-group forums, blogs, and marketing and observational studies can yield insights that surveys cannot. (For more on listening to users, see Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey Rayport, "Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design," HBR November–December 1997.) Intuit, for example, is a leader in "follow them home" studies. Company representatives visit customers where they live or work and observe how they use Intuit products such as QuickBooks. It was from watching the smallest businesses struggle with QuickBooks Pro that the company recognized a need for a product like QuickBooks Simple Start. These tools lend themselves to the measurement of present and potential patterns, for they entail more time, preparation, and expense than transaction-based surveys.
Acting on Experience Information
Let's take a look at a company we'll call HiTouch—which is actually a composite of companies—as it struggled to create a system for managing customer experience. HiTouch, a business-to-business global financial services provider, received a shocking wake-up call when a top customer shifted half its business to an archrival. HiTouch executives had just completed a quarterly account review classifying the relationship with this account as "superior." The stunned executives wondered what they could have missed.
From their efforts to salvage the account, HiTouch executives learned enough to initiate a companywide effort to improve the experience of all other major accounts. After conducting a mini-audit of existing customer-experience programs, responsible parties, and results, it discovered that its vertical-market groups hardly went further than tracking leads and analyzing buying patterns. Most employees assumed customer experience was the job of marketing or sales. The company's only CEM metric came from a mailed annual customer satisfaction survey whose wording hadn't changed in three years.
HiTouch engaged consultants to help with the initiative. Rather than spending a lot of time establishing formal customer experience goals or a detailed plan, the consultants argued for a "fast prototype" relationship survey of top customers. HiTouch's leaders identified the touch points they knew had disappointed their most important customers. Preventing further customer defections, they realized, would require customer experience goals for every stage of the value chain. These had to serve every vertical market's financial objectives while being compatible with the company's branding.
As the issues piled up, it became clear that the effort needed an executive leader, a budget, and dedicated resources. HiTouch's top sales executive, having become a believer in the process, stepped up. To ensure a good response rate, he asked sales account executives to prep customers receiving the survey. A few showed a predistribution draft to customers so that they could help refine issue selection and tone. Of the various questions settled on, two key ones were "How important to your purchasing decision was HiTouch's brand and the service promise it seemed to make?" and "Do you believe HiTouch delivers the experience promised by its marketing and sales force?" The pilot survey included a summary metric that permitted HiTouch to compare responses by location, service platform, and vertical market.
The sales executive noticed that meetings about the pilot survey, in which salespeople fed customer experience information back to the customers themselves, differed from the typical sales call by shifting the dialogue away from the individual transaction and toward relationship development. They also provided an excellent opportunity to introduce to the customers HiTouch's nonsales employees who were in a position to fix customer problems as they arose. In this fashion, salespeople began to view their jobs less as a functional responsibility than as an organizational process.
Data from the survey began to flow within 24 hours of distribution. Many of customers' verbatim comments were blunt. Some executives became defensive and tried to explain away what the data were saying rather than understand the concerns behind them. Some never quit demanding yet one more data point. Others strained to launch company responses before fully understanding what was being said.
With 60% of the responses in, it became clear which experiences were critical to overall satisfaction. However, they were different in each vertical market, with few exceptions. For each, summary scores were compared with customer revenue. On that basis, finance placed every customer in one of four quadrants.
- Model customers: good summary scores; good revenue.
- Growth customers: good summary scores; higher potential revenue. Candidates for cross selling and upselling.
- At-Risk customers: low scores; good revenue. Demanding decisive intervention.
- Dangling customers: low scores; low revenue. To be rescued or abandoned.
Auspiciously, the Growth segment had three times as many customers as any of the others. But on further examination it emerged that some of those customers didn't buy as much as those in other quadrants. In fact, one of the largest remaining customers was squarely in the At-Risk quadrant.
The results of the initial survey coincided with the start of the strategic-planning cycle. By the following quarter, every vertical-market team, having shown some customers the findings and described what the team planned to do about them, was ready to send out transaction surveys of customers' experiences with service installation and repair. Every team had also set experience goals for itself and scheduled relationship surveys.
A year later, current experience data had replaced ill-informed opinion at HiTouch. At monthly operations meetings, vertical-market general managers reviewed key customer experience issues, and actions taken, before reviewing financials. A rolling summary of relationship issues unearthed by customer surveys kicked off quarterly executive strategy discussions. Defections within each vertical-market group dropped by an average of 16%.
Not everything worked as hoped. The company set up an executive dashboard to keep track of installation experience issues, but the disclosure of high-volume transaction information so upset the managers responsible that they never got around to resolving the underlying issues. The dashboard was pulled in favor of automatic triggers that channeled problems to specialists or general managers, who began to make good progress in solving them. Increased analyst staffing and simplified reporting helped the general managers identify new opportunities, an area they had been neglecting.
The Employee Experience
Customer experience does not improve until it becomes a top priority and a company's work processes, systems, and structure change to reflect that. When employees observe senior managers persistently demanding experience information and using it to make tough decisions, their own decisions are conditioned by that awareness.
Not long after breaking every software-industry growth record, Siebel Systems (now part of Oracle) saw its satisfaction ratings begin to drop. An adopter of customer experience management, the company had gathered data revealing that customers found a large disparity between actual and expected costs of ownership of Siebel 6, a sales-force automation tool based on a client-server architecture. The proposed solution, a shift to a Web-based architecture in Siebel 7, would require forgoing the development of other major features—and the revenues they generated—for two years. Yet Siebel's leadership went ahead with the shift anyway. Satisfaction levels soon returned to their formerly lofty levels, and employees took heart as management placed experience ahead of revenues.
Once persuaded of the importance of experience, every function has a role to play.
Marketing has to capture the tastes and standards of every one of its targeted market segments, circulate that knowledge within the company, and then tailor all consumer communications accordingly.
Service operations must ensure that processes, skills, and practices are attuned to every touch point. (Present-patterns surveys are good for tracking high-volume touch points such as call centers.)
Product development should do more than specify needed features. It should also design experiences after observing how customers use products and services, learning why they use offerings as they do, and figuring out how existing products might be frustrating them. Ideally, product developers will identify customer behavior that runs counter to a company's expectations and uncover needs that haven't been identified.
Information technology that can collect, analyze, and distribute CEM data, integrate the information with that generated by CRM, and monitor progress must be in place. As the data flow stabilizes, the form of presentation and its degree of detail should be keyed to whichever internal audience the data are meant for. A level of detail that is appropriate for an analyst, for example, can easily overwhelm a line manager. CEM is a play within a play, so to speak; just as customers must have a good experience, employees need to have a good experience digesting information about themselves.
Human resources should put together a communications and training strategy that conveys the economic rationale for CEM and paints a picture of how it will alter work and decision-making processes. Since the front line determines the bulk of customer experience, it would be a good idea to study those employees' individual capabilities, work processes, and attitudes. As for performance management, of course customer experience results should affect compensation. But as we have learned in recent years, incentives that are too powerful are more likely to distort behavior than channel it productively.
Account teams must progress from annual surveys to detailed touch-point analysis, then translate present patterns of customer experience and issues gleaned from recent transactions into action plans that are shared with customers. Not every significant implication is readily apparent. Leaders need to press the data to precipitate customers' concealed longings.
. . .
Customer dissatisfaction is widespread and, because of customers' empowerment, increasingly dangerous. Although companies know a lot about customers' buying habits, incomes, and other characteristics used to classify them, they know little about the thoughts, emotions, and states of mind that customers' interactions with products, services, and brands induce. Yet unless companies know about these subjective experiences and the role every function plays in shaping them, customer satisfaction is more a slogan than an attainable goal.

subset: commoncrawl


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Uruguay marijuana bill slowly gains public support
While public opinion remains largely opposed to marijuana regulation in Uruguay, a new poll shows support for the bill is growing, especially among likely voters for the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) coalition, which could be good news for countries hoping to follow Uruguay's drug policy example.
On Sept. 2, leading Uruguayan pollster Cifra published the results of a new survey on marijuana regulation carried out from Aug. 15 – 24, which brought good news for supporters of the bill. The polling firm found that 61 percent of the country was opposed to the measure, a five-point drop since it was first proposed by President Jose Mujica in July 2012. The latest poll confirms that there has been a definite, albeit slight, downward trend in disapproval of the law in the past year.
The Cifra poll also found that, while conservative Colorado and National Party voters remain overwhelmingly against it, support for the bill has grown among individuals who identify as FA voters. For the first time since the bill was presented, more FA supporters are on board with marijuana regulation (47 percent) than against it (40 percent).
InSight Crime Analysis
The new Cifra poll is good news for advocates of marijuana regulation in Uruguay. It provides Regulacion Responsable – the coalition of civil society groups which has banded together to support the bill – with a useful narrative to present to legislators sitting on the fence about the initiative. Although it is expected to face a far easier time in the Senate, with no FA senators likely to oppose it, some are sure to have private doubts about the wisdom of supporting such an unpopular initiative. They may have fewer qualms with a relative majority of their party's supporters now backing the bill.
However, the poll did not bring all positive news for supporters. Alarmingly, some two-thirds of respondents (65 percent) said they would "probably" or "definitely" sign a petition to hold a referendum on the bill. Under Uruguayan law, if the opposition presents signatures from 2 percent of the electorate (roughly 52,000 people) in January or February of next year, a preliminary vote on whether to hold a referendum could take place in March or April. If over 25 percent of the electorate participates in that vote, the marijuana regulation law could face a referendum in July 2014.
Fortunately for regulation advocates, the odds of this happening are very slim. Although the opposition was able to gather enough signatures to trigger a preliminary vote in June on whether to hold a referendum on a controversial abortion decriminalization law passed last year, this ultimately failed. Only 8.8 percent of the electorate turned out, despite the fact that over 50 percent of those polled had said they would participate. If the opposition could not mobilize enough people to come out against abortion, a highly emotional issue, it is unlikely that they will be able to do so for marijuana, and the Frente Amplio is counting on this.
That the bill is unlikely to be removed via a referendum is also good news for international actors looking to Uruguay to provide a new drug policy model. Lawmakers in Mexico, for instance, have directly cited Uruguay's initiative as the inspiration for a bill that would center around authorizing membership clubs and cultivation for personal use.
If the bill survives the opposition's attempts to strike it from Uruguay's lawbooks, it will also provide an interesting laboratory to examine the effect of marijuana legalization on insecurity and organized crime. The Uruguayan law will regulate every aspect of the illicit market for the drug (production, sale and distribution), which currently brings in around million to criminal groups. If it succeeds in lowering thecountry's rising crime rate, it will likely fuel the arguments of those calling for more relaxed marijuana laws in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, like Colombia and Guatemala.


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Some sources that provide relationship advice for women talk about moving on, but what if you're not ready to move on? What if you still want to get your ex-husband back and you're not ready to end the relationship? If you're sure you still want the marriage to continue despite his flaws, then it is time to find out how to get him back.
Steps on How to Get Your Husband Back
1. Look at Things from His Perspective
After a break up or a particularly bad fight, you may feel like you're just putting up with him while he completely ignores your feelings. If you think that he's constantly misunderstanding you, you may never figure out that he feels you're the same with him.
Empathy is the best tool you can use when you're struggling to fix the relationship. If it's difficult for you to do this on your own, read some self-help resources on men behaviour. You may find some insights that you never realized, and these may help you understand your man better.
Thinking that you know your husband well is also a misconception that you should avoid. By keeping an open mind, you can let go of all the misguided expectations. He's human like you, and he may say bad things he would probably regret later on.
2. Identify the Causes of the Break Up
It's a painful process but there's no substitute for deep introspection when you're trying to figure out how to get him back. Ask yourself what caused the break-up, and figure out a way to deal with it. The most common causes are financial worries, stress with children and jealousy. The trick is to try to deal with these issues on your own so that you can take a personal stand when it's time for you and your ex to have your talk.
Be ready to listen to your ex when he talks about his thoughts on why you broke up. If you insist that he's wrong even when he's just talking about his feelings, you won't get anywhere. Your opinion and his may differ when it comes to identifying the main causes why your relationship failed.
Introspecting would mean staying away from each other for a while. This is a good thing because you can make him miss you. Once he has calmed down and thought about the causes of the break up, he may find out that you're not the one at fault. Feelings of guilt and remorse are powerful. If he admits to himself that he played a part in destroying the relationship, he can become more receptive to your efforts to get back together.
3. Come Up With Solutions
Men want to hear about solutions more than anything else. If you've been trying to get him to talk to you again for the longest time and he finally agrees to meet up, don't waste time by bringing up the last fight you had. Instead, come up with solutions and present them in a calm way so that he knows you're serious about getting back together.
If your talk turns out to be a reprise of your last fight, you won't be able to figure out how to get him back. You'll be going back to square one. What you need to do is to stay focused on persuading him to change his mind about breaking up.


text:
(visited by Ross Finlayson)
21-Mar-2013 -- I ended my 'mini vacation' in Florida with a visit to this deceptively difficult confluence point. At first glance, it seemed that this would be quite an easy point to visit, because it's only about a mile from Interstate 95 - the primary north-south freeway along the US East Coast. But there had to be a reason why it had been successfully visited only once before. The first difficulty was finding a good access point, because so many of the roads nearby are closed by gates, and/or marked with "no trespassing" signs. I found the dirt road (off highway 44) that had been used by a previous visitor, but it was much too sandy to be drivable by my small rental car.
Instead, I found a point on highway 44 - just west of I-95 - where power lines cross the highway, about 0.9 miles from the confluence point. I parked my car beside the highway, and followed the power line right-of-way in the general direction of the confluence point. Along the way, I saw a small pond; on my way back, I had the pleasure of photographing a pair of sandhill cranes nearby.
When I got within about 6/10 of a mile from the confluence point, I found that I had to 'bushwhack' through thick forest to get to the confluence point. This was a difficult hike, with many vines and thorny plants to negotiate. (Fortunately, though, at this time of year, the ground was mostly dry.) After a lot of effort, I reached the confluence point, which lies in a small clearing, in a section of commercial pine forest.
I was able to get 'all zeros' on my Garmin GPS receiver, but unfortunately after I returned, I found that its USB connector had broken, and I was unable to download the screenshot that I had taken. I mailed my GPS receiver in to Garmin for repair, but unfortunately they sent me back a different, refurbished unit - so my 'all zeros' screenshot was lost. Instead, I've posted an EXIF reading from one of my photos; it shows my camera's GPS recorder very close to the point.


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Joergen Geerds, Dan Finkler and Mark Sevenoff got six Sony Ericsson Xperia phones, combined them with a special panoramic mount and then recorded an 360-degree videopanorama of their ride in Moab, Utah. The result is beautiful, especially the Little Planet view.
Go play with the interactive version here. [Xperia Studio via All Things D]


text:
Welcome to the NFL, Donald.
About an hour before Barack Obama came to the microphone and, in a manner of speaking, deftly slit his throat, cut out his entrails, set him ablaze and scraped what was left off the presidential shoe, Donald Trump was having a grand old time at Saturday night's White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.
Photos from the Newsweek/Daily Beast Party
He had arrived at the Washington Hilton as the center of attention, the unmistakable blond pompadour, with its amazing cross-hatched bangs, bobbing and weaving above a sea of tuxedos and evening gowns. He'd spent the past few weeks moonlighting from NBC's Celebrity Apprentice to fling nasty (some say racist) innuendoes about the president's birthplace and academic record. Now he was pressing on with his nationally televised audition as an undeclared Republican presidential candidate.
But after Obama finished with him—and the evening's paid entertainer, Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers, stomped on the remains—a scowling Trump and his frowning model-wife bolted out of their chairs in the basement ballroom, pushed their way toward the exit with their security team, and disappeared into the cruel Washington night.
"That was very serious," said current CNN host and former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a recognized expert in political annihilation. "I think that bubble has burst."
During dinner, the reality TV star and real estate mogul was his cocky, self-satisfied self. "We're with Lally and The Washington Post," he told me as he sat in a place of honor next to Lally Weymouth, the daughter and mother of newspaper publishers (Katharine Graham and Katharine Weymouth, respectively). "It's a great honor to be at the dinner. It's a great honor," Trump added as his hostess beamed. "The response has been lovely."
What if the president cracks jokes about him?
"I have no idea," Trump parried blandly. "I'm leading in all the polls, but other than that, I have no idea… Having a good time! Great people!"
Trump's third wife, Melania Knauss, was equally genial. "We always have fun," she confided in her lilting Slovenian purr.
Does she want him to run?
"Well," she answered, "he will make a decision prior to June, so we will see what happens."
Oh, poor lambs.
"Donald Trump is here tonight!" the president began amiably. "I know that he's taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder, to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald." Trump could be seen smiling. "And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter—like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
Trump's smile was beginning to stiffen.
"All kidding aside," Obama went on in a sober deadpan, "obviously we know about your credentials and breadth of experience." At this, ripples of laughter coursed through the crowd of 3,000. The ripples built into waves, lapping at Trump's table. "For example—seriously—in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice, at the steak house, the men's cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks," the president continued. "And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately you didn't blame Little John or Meatloaf. You fired Gary Busey. And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night."
The waves of laughter built into a tsunami. And then into a defeaning roar. And then cheers! There was a sickly grin plastered on Trump's face, as it dawned on even him that the president of the United States had made a fool of him, and the whole world was laughing.
"Well-handled, sir! Well-handled!" Obama added, driving in the blade.
"Say what you will about Mr. Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House," Obama noted. On the four jumbotrons hanging from the ceiling, there flashed a cartoon depicting the executive mansion and its grounds transformed into a hotel/casino/golf course complex with bikinied babes hoisting cocktails on the lawn and a huge garish neon sign advertising "Trump. The White House. Presidential Suite."
Seth Meyers was, if possible, even less gentle. And this time Trump made no effort to smile. It's one thing to be mocked by the Leader of the Free World, quite another to be ridiculed by a clown.
"Donald Trump has been saying that he'll run for president as a Republican—which is surprising, since I just assumed he was running as a joke," Meyers began, getting the sort of audience response most comedians dream of—laughter and applause—while, for Trump, it must have been reminiscent of a classic humiliation nightmare.
"Donald Trump often appears on Fox, which is ironic—because a fox often appears on Donald Trump's head," Meyers continued. "If you're at The Washington Post table with Trump and you can't finish your entrée, don't worry, the fox will eat it."
Meyers added: "Gary Busey said recently that Donald Trump would make a great president. Of course he said the same thing about an old, rusty birdcage he found. Donald Trump owns the Miss USA Pageant—which is great for Republicans because it will streamline their search for a vice president. Donald Trump said recently he has 'a great relationship with the blacks.' But unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I bet he's mistaken."
Even Obama, on the dais, was dissolved in laughter.
"I like that Trump is filthy-rich but nobody told his accent," Meyers persisted. "His whole life is models, gold leaf and marble columns, but he still sounds like a know-it-all down at the OTB."
Meyers, by the way, killed—no mean feat at an event to which the president traditionally brings the best material, gets the biggest laughs, and the hired help dies an agonizing death.
Obama, meanwhile, also shot some arrows at some of his non-Trump rivals. For example:
* "The deficit is a serious issue. That's why Paul Ryan couldn't be here tonight. His budget has no room for laughter."
* "Michele Bachmann is here…and she is thinking about running for president—which is weird, because I hear she was born in Canada. Yes, Michele, this is how it starts."
* "And then there's a vicious rumor floating around that could really hurt Mitt Romney. I heard he passed universal health care when he was governor of Massachusetts!"
Which is to say, a good time was had by almost all.
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.


text:
The boy could not have been more than nine years old. But his bald head testified to the treatment for cancer he had undergone.
I saw him coming out one of the emergency room treatment areas at Meadowlands Hospital while I lay flat on a cot in the hall.
He seemed very shy and reluctant to disturb the nurses as he approached their workstation to make a request. Around us both, the equipment that defined our health hummed and beeped, telling the staff how close we had come to the edge of life. We both seemed insignificant in the hubbub of people coming and going, new stretchers being rolled in, patients being moved out, amazing business for what should have been an ordinary Saturday afternoon in late June.
When the boy spoke, I could hardly hear him, and he had to speak twice before the nurse heard him as well.
"Can I have a blanket for my mother?" he asked.
As the nurse scrambled to comply with the boy's request, the tragic truth of the situation hit me. The boy was not the patient; his mother was.
Watching this combined with all the other human tragedies going on in the ER, I felt more foolish than I had before. I was taking up valuable time for an injury I had only suspected was a broken leg, but was likely not, and was the least of the most serious injuries there, created by a rather stupid lack of balance earlier in the day.
I had been taking some pictures in Union City while waiting for my wife to finish shopping in one of the stores in the nearby Columbia Park Mall in North Bergen. In a rush to get back to her, I stepped off a curb into the parking lot, and twisted an ankle that caused me to fall onto my other knee.
I hadn't realized my fall until I saw strangers looking down at me, asking me if I was all right. Did I need them to call an ambulance?
I thought I was fine until I stood up and realized I could not put weight on my left leg. It buckled each time I tried to walk. I thought it was broken. I managed to hobble to a wall to lean on for support.
Several people who appeared to be of Latino descent kept tabs on me asking if I wanted water. When I told them I needed to reach my wife, they offered to help. What does she look like? Where is she? They asked this in a mixture of English and Spanish that I found difficult to follow.
Then I saw my wife Sharon at the other end of the parking lot – more than a football field's length away. I shouted and waved my arms. She didn't hear me at first, and when she did, she couldn't see me, because I was under an awning.
"It didn't sound like you," she said later.
Back and forth Sharon walked, eventually ending up in front of ShopRite. One of the women went to find her, but did not speak English well enough to convey to Sharon what had happened to me.
"Your husband, he…," the woman told my wife, motioning to indicate that I had fallen over.
"I had no clue as to what she meant," Sharon said later. But eventually, she caught on to the idea that I was hurt and up at the other end of the parking lot, and she rushed over.
"At first, I saw only your swollen ankle," she told me later in the hospital. "Your pants leg covered your knee so I couldn't see the scrape or the swelling."
The woman knew enough English to convey to the staff at ShopRite that I needed an ambulance. The North Bergen Ambulance crew along with a North Bergen police car arrived a moment later to take me to Meadowlands Hospital.
From the rear of the ambulance, I saw the familiar world in reverse: Union City giving away to North Bergen, then to Secaucus. Tragically, the landscape was littered with other ambulances at other points, revealing the vastness of human suffering I would likely have otherwise overlooked had I not become part of its network.
One family huddled outside the closed door of an examination room.
The EMT comforted me by saying that I probably did not have a broken leg.
"But that'll be for a doctor to confirm once you've had X-rays," he said.
The doctor confirmed the EMT was correct, but puzzled over what he called the knees of a 17-year-old, knees that showed a gap as if I was in the middle of growth spurt. Since at 61 I was unlikely to grow much more, this must have been something negative.
The EMT talked to me in the hall, saying that I had not tensed up during my fall, which kept me from breaking anything.
"Drunks do the same thing when they're in a car crash," he said. "They don't realize they're going to hit anything when they're starting to crash. They walk away without breaking anything. It's the people they hit that suffer the most damage."
The ER was so busy with real tragedies, the staff had to keep me in the hall, a vantage point that allowed me to witness the human drama ongoing around me, the coming and going, the suffering almost grieving families, the machines going haywire with reports that hinted that the end of life might be near. One family huddled outside the closed door of an examination room waiting for the doctors to tell them the fate of their loved one inside.
And in those moments, as nurses and technicians scrambled to provide aid and comfort, I realized how lucky I was, how I was the least injured in that place and how in the end, I would get to walk out of there on my own two feet, no more worse off than wearing a temporary cast and a cane, while people like that nine-year-old bald-headed boy would wait to hear the news about his mother, or the daughter outside the closed door waited to hear news of her father's fate, their lives resting on the shoulders of this army of nurses, doctors, and EMTs who had to pause in their desperate activity to wait on me.


text:
• unfriend •
Pronunciation: ên-frind • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Verb, transitive
Meaning: 1. (1659) To quit a friendship, to stop being friends with someone. 2. (2009) To remove someone from the list of people with whom you communicate on an Internet social network, such as FaceBook.
Notes: The English word friend has endured considerable torture over its life. In addition to being blended with enemy to produce frenemy, friend has long been prefixed with un- "not, undo". In 2005, however, its meaning was expanded to include anyone we talk to in a social network. To add someone to our list of approved chat companions came to be friending, as distinct from befriending "making someone a true friend". To unfriend someone is to stop being a friend in either sense. Unfriended has meant simply "without friends" since 1513.
In Play: I suppose today's word is a threat more than anything else: "If you don't go to the prom with me I'll unfriend you from my FaceBook account!" Do keep in mind, however, that this is not a new word and its more traditional meaning is still available: "While Leland was not kicked off the team for mooning the coach during practice, he was unfriended by most of the team and shunned by all the cheerleaders."
Word History: Today's Good Word is a real English word, unborrowed, unfilched, and uncopied. It started out as Old English freond "beloved", closely related to freo "free". The original Proto-Indo-European root was probably close to Sanskrit priya "dear, beloved", for we find prijatel' "friend" in Russian and similar words in other Slavic languages. The connection with the word free among the Germanic languages has long puzzled etymologists. The best guess so far is that during the Old English period, when being born free rather than enslaved was critical, this word was associated with people of your own bloodline and hence especially loved. Evidence of this is seen in common phrases like freobroðor "one's own free (born) brother and freodohtor "one's own free (born) daughter". (Let us now pay special gratitude to Christ Stewart of South Africa for suggesting today's Good Word, lest he unfriend us.)
P.S. - Register for the Daily Good Word E-Mail! - You can get our daily Good Word sent directly to you via e-mail in either HTML or Text format. Go to our Registration Page to sign up today!


text:
Bacteria are living things that have only one cell. Under a microscope, they look like balls, rods, or spirals. They are so small that a line of 1,000 could fit across a pencil eraser. Most bacteria won't hurt you - less than 1 percent of the different types make people sick. Many are helpful. Some bacteria help to digest food, destroy disease-causing cells, and give the body needed vitamins. Bacteria are also used in making healthy foods like yogurt and cheese.
But infectious bacteria can make you ill. They reproduce quickly in your body. Many give off chemicals called toxins, which can damage tissue and make you sick. Examples of bacteria that cause infections include Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, and E. coli.
Antibiotics are the usual treatment. When you take antibiotics, follow the directions carefully. Each time you take antibiotics, you increase the chances that bacteria in your body will learn to resist them causing antibiotic resistance. Later, you could get or spread an infection that those antibiotics cannot cure.
NIH: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases


text:
A description of the algorithms and their applications can be found in:
Please cite the above publication when referencing this material, and also include the standard citation for PhysioNet:
Acute Brain injury (ABI) is a devastating event requiring intensive acute treatment and post-injury rehabilitation, both delivered for indeterminate periods of time. For severe ABIs, acute treatment is aimed at stabilizing the patient to prevent secondary brain injury from ischemia and swelling. This requires a balance between adequate levels of cerebral blood flow and safely low intracranial pressure (ICP) - a task normally done by autoregulatory (AR) processes of the brain.
In the absence of normal AR, hemodynamic stability is difficult to maintain because there are no reliable predictors to guide treatment. Thus, guidelines for triage and discharge are somewhat arbitrary for ABI and the need for a Clinical Decision Support (CDS) system for neurotrauma is widely recognized. Prerequisite to a CDS is a large database of patient records and efficient means to extract meaningful information from them.
CHARIS will systematize the analysis of relevant physiological signals, and will embody data-driven algorithms to search for potential predictors of acute clinical events.
Software Description
The CHARIS GUI provides an integrated platform for evaluating data necessary for developing predictive models of intracranial hyptertension (IH).
The chosen test index which the underlying algorithms use is the well-established PRx, a moving correlation index between mean arterial blood pressure and intracranial pressure. This is based on the assumption that normal intracranial pressure (ICP) should not directly correlate with arterial blood pressure (ABP).
After loading the data, the algorithm packet averages the data to reduce information volume and calculates the PRx of the input waveforms. It will then search through the data to detect noteable events based on the set threshold parameters. Upon the detection of each potential IH location, the user will be prompted to state whether or not it is an artifact, ultimately resulting in a set of semi-supervised detected events.
The GUI provides a convenient interface to load, process, label, graph, and save the waveforms, features, and events. Open the GUI by running CHARIS_GUI.m. The CHARIS-GUI-Instructions.pdf file contains detailed instructions on how to implement each functionality.
Example Data
The sample-input-data.zip
file contains a set of waveform .mat
files (ABP, ECG, ICP and Time) that can be fed into the GUI and analyzed. The sample-output.zip
file contains an example set of analysis results output by the GUI.
Software Requirements
The code and GUI are implemented in Matlab. Tests were successfully performed on Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 for Matlab versions 2015b, 2016a, and 2016b.
This software package was contributed by William Craelius, professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University.
Name Last modified Size Description
Parent Directory - sample-output.zip 2016-12-14 16:46 128M sample-input-data.zip 2016-12-14 16:46 185M gui-image.png 2016-12-14 16:46 98K CHARIS_GUI_CODE/ 2016-12-14 16:46 - CHARIS_GUI_CODE.zip 2016-12-14 16:46 343K CHARIS-GUI-Instructions.pdf 2016-12-16 16:50 1.9M
If you would like help understanding, using, or downloading content, please see our Frequently Asked Questions. If you have any comments, feedback, or particular questions regarding this page, please send them to the webmaster. Comments and issues can also be raised on PhysioNet's GitHub page. Updated Friday, 28 October 2016 at 16:58 EDT |
PhysioNet is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) under NIH grant number 2R01GM104987-09.


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Book review: A Promise Between Friends by Carol Rivers
Welcome back to the gritty cockney world which has become a familiar backdrop to Carol Rivers' gripping family sagas and dramas. This much-loved author's stories spring from the warm-hearted and resourceful neighbourhoods of the East End, the heart of London's docklands and home to a wealth of rough-tough characters.
In A Promise Between Friends, we meet pretty, ambitious 19-year-old Ruby Payne and her lifelong friend Kath Rigler who are eager to enjoy their post-war independence. Moving away from home to a bedsit in the East End is a chance to break free for them both, Kath from her abusive father and Ruby to escape the unhappy memories of her beloved brother Pete's suicide two years before.
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Hide AdThe girls grew up together in the Isle of Dogs and Kath's brother Bernie has always had a soft spot for fun-loving Ruby. But Ruby has ambitions. She has found work at a fashionable new dog grooming parlour close to the city and even though animals aren't really her thing, she has high hopes of changing her fortunes.
Shy Kath, always unsure of herself, isn't quite so lucky and has to make do with her tough factory job, leaning more and more on Ruby for emotional support.
But then Ruby meets handsome, charming Nick Brandon at a local club and, desperate to find real romance, she falls for his good looks and winning smile despite warnings from those around her that he is trouble.
And when Anna Charnwood-Smythe, owner of a modelling and escort agency, offers Ruby a job, the impressionable teenager is convinced that this is the start of a new and glamorous career.
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Hide AdBut Ruby's taste of the high life will come at a cost for both her and Kath…
Rivers captures all the pioneering spirit of the 1950s in this gritty tale of love, loss, greed and betrayal. Feisty Ruby and her friend Kath embody all the hopes and dreams of a generation eager to escape the dark days of the war years and strike out in a brave new world.
But Rivers also reminds us that this was still an age very much bound by tradition and convention, an unforgiving place for those who did not conform to society's ideas of what was right and 'normal.'
Packed with emotion, drama, heartache, cockney humour and unexpected twists and turns, this compelling story guarantees plenty of laughter and tears before the last page has turned.
(Simon & Schuster, paperback, £7.99)


text:
Recently I have started reading the 2006 Hardball Times Baseball Annual. I will do a book review at some time in the future but for now it will suffice to say that you should probably get this book. Anyway, for now I just have some comments on a technical issue that was brought up by reading Dan Fox's article "Are You Feeling Lucky?" Mr. Fox also has an excellent blog, Dan Agonistes (linked on side of page) in addition to his writing for the Hardball Times.
Anyway, the article examines team's runs scored and allowed versus their BsR estimates, and runs scored and allowed versus W% by using Pythagenpat. There is a typo in the Pythpat formula--they have it as RPG^2.85, when it should be RPG^.285. But obviously the formula was applied correctly in the article, and it's just a production mistake. There is also an error in the Indians' and Mariners' runs allowed that leads to a faulty conclusion about who "should have" won the AL Central (which this Indians fan just happened to notice). The Indians were not actually "lucky"--in fact, Bill James' analysis in his Handbook, based on RC and RC Allowed, shows that the Indians were the best team in baseball, and easily the "unluckiest" or "least efficient". Anyway, Dan told me that he will have an updated version of the article on their website, and will fix that minor snafu.
The main point here is not to criticize the article, because it's a fine article, but to mention that there is a simple way to use the Pythagenpat relationship to estimate Runs Per Win. What Fox does is take, say, a seven game margin above Pythpat expectation, and multiply this by a RPW factor to give an equivalent number of runs. This is not technically precise, since RPW is a linear concept and Pythpat is not, but of course the linear approximation works very well and so this does not really present a problem in the analysis. Fox uses Palmer's RPW = 10*sqrt(RPG/9). This formula is fine, but I would just like to point out there is a similar formula that comes directly from Pythpat. David Smyth, in the past, has published a formula that gives the RPW for any team, from Pyth:
RPW = 2*(R-RA)*(R^x + RA^x)/(R^x - RA^x)
Where R and RA are per game, and x is the exponent. You can check and verify that this formula works. However, at R = RA, it is undefined because the denominator will be zero. And this is a shame, because it is the point where R = RA that we would want to examine in order to conclude that in a context with an RPG of X, RPW is Y.
However, if we differentiate PW% with respect to RD, we will find a formula that gives the correct result at the R = RA point. This formula is:
RPW = ((2*RPG*(RR^x + 1)^2*(.5 - RD/(2*RPG))^2)/(x*RR^(x-1))
That's confusing as heck, but remember, we want to evaluate it at R = RA. So RR = 1 and RD = 0. One raised to any power is one, so we can simplify to:
RPW = ((2*RPG*(1 + 1)^2*(.5 – 0/(2*RPG))^2)/(x)
= ((2*RPG*(2)^2*(.5)^2)/x
= (2*RPG)/x
And what is x? We've set x equal to RPG to some power. Various people use different values--I originally published it as .29, David Smyth originally published it as .287, Davenport and Fox used .285, Tango Tiger found that .28 would probably provide the best combination of accuracy with extreme and regular teams. I'll continue using x here just so that it is applicable to any of these choices.
Since x = RPG^z, we have this equation for RPW:
RPW = (2*RPG)/RPG^z
And this can be rewritten as:
RPW = 2*RPG^(1 - z)
So this is somewhere around 2*RPG^.72. So at 9.18 RPG, the 2005 average value, Palmer gives 10*sqrt(9.18/9) = 10.10 and Pythpat gives 2*9.18^.72 = 9.87. In case you are curious how these work with some real teams, with 1984-2003 teams, Palmer's formula gives a RMSE of 3.938 and the one presented here gives 3.895. So you do not have to sacrifice accuracy with the run-of-the-mill teams.
The known point discovered by Smyth, that at RPG = 1, x must equal 1, also by definition states that RPW must equal 2 when RPG = 1. If you have a team that scores 100 runs and allows 62 runs, they will go 100-62. Their RD is 38, and 38/2 = 19. 19 is your estimate of wins above .500, and .500 is 81 wins, so 81+19 = 100. So the RPW must be two when the RPG is one. The Pythpat-based formula of course returns this result. The Palmer RPW gives 3.33.
As a final note, one thing I cannot quite figure out from Fox's article is whether he is using Pythpat and Palmer to find an overall value for the league, and then using that value for each team, or whether he is using the specific value for each team. The second approach would again be more precise, but the first is an alright assumption for simplicity's sake.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Runs Per Win
4 comments:
Thanks for the mention, and yes I have made the corrections we emailed about at http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/second-look-at-luck/.
As to your last question, if I understand you right, I'm using the 10.10 value from Palmer and then applying that value to each team. You're right, that the other would be more accurrate.
Thanks for remidning me of the simplified formula. I had seen it somewhere before but forgot all about it.- AnonymousFebruary 5, 2006 at 4:17 PM
Being a subject close to my heart, I found "Runs per Win" very interesting. I have the following comments and questions:
1. I also enjoyed Dan Fox's article. However, I thought his use of PythagenPat was overkill. I think PythagenPat always overcomplicates calculations at a team level. A Pythagorean calculation using an exponent of 2 or 1.88 is plenty accurate enough.
2. I also thought Fox's use of Palmer's "square root" formula for RPW was fine, but, being biased, I would have used the formula I derived (By The Numbers, November 2003). It is RPW=2*RPG/x, where x is the Pythagorean exponent. When x=2, RPW is simply RPG.
3. Can you provide the reference for David Smyth's formula for RPW?
4. You mention that Smyth's formula is undefined when R=Ra and I understand why you think "it's a shame". But, when R=Ra, W% is theoretically 0.500, and wins above 0.500 are theoretically zero, also. So, RPW will be 0/0, and, therefore, also undefined (unless you can apply L'Hopital's Rule).
5. A little bit of algebra on Smyth's formula at x=2, yields RPW = 2*(R^2+Ra^2)/(R+Ra). With this formula, you never have the problem of division by zero.
6. You wrote "However, if we differentiate PW% with respect to RD … we find … RPW = ((2*RPG*(RR^x + 1)^2*(.5 - RD/(2*RPG))^2)/(x*RR^(x-1))" Is PW% Pythagorean winning percentage? If so, what formula did you differentiate to get this? Maybe it doesn't matter because when I did it, it also distilled down to RPW=2*RPW/x.
Ralph Caola 1. I don't disagree that it is ok to use 2, but I also don't see any reason why not to use a better estimate if you are inclined to do so.
3. It was posted on a FanHome thread sometime in the past, but I don't think it is one that is currently on the board.
4. I didn't think of it that way, that's a good point.
6. Yes, I was using PW% to abbreviate Pythagorean W%. I differentiated Run Ratio with respect to Run Differential(dRR/dRD) and then PW% with respect to to RR(dPW%/dRR). I multiplied those to get dPW%/dRD, which is RPW. It's good to know that we got the same result.- AnonymousFebruary 6, 2006 at 6:24 AM
In the last line of my previous comment I wrote:
It should be:


text: Jeanette Ogden, age 96 of Blissfield, passed away Sunday, March 23, 2014, at Lenawee Medical Care Facility with her family by her side. She was born May 2, 1917, in Blissfield, Michigan, to the late Edward and Madge (Smith) Brown. Jeanette was a member of the graduating Class of 1935 from Blissfield High School. On August 21, 1947, she was married to Richard Ogden, and they celebrated almost 62 years of marriage before his death in 2009. Jeanette worked at Tibbs Brothers IGA and the Gambles store. She was a lifetime member of the Blissfield American Legion Auxilliary. She is survived by her children: James (Laura) Marsh of Toledo; Jacqueline O'Neill of Bradenton, FL; Robert (Cindy) Ogden of Adrian; and Deborah (Robert) Pooley of Blissfield; three grandchildren, several great grandchildren and a sister, Lois "Kathleen" Sheldon of Blissfield. In addition to her husband, she was preceded in death by four brothers, Macklin, Harold, Lawrence, and Edward Jr; a sister, Gladys Goetz; and a daughter in infancy. Visitation for Jeanette will take place at Wagley Funeral Home, Tagsold Chapel in Blissfield on Thursday, March 27, 2014 from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. immediately followed by a graveside service at Pleasant View Cemetery. Contributions in memory of Jeanette may be made to Hospice of Lenawee. Online condolences are welcome at www.WagleyFuneralHome.com.